The place where all the chapters from the book of Nix and Mist shall go, first Remaining and then Infection

Saturday, 24 March 2012

Nix and Mist Chapter 4: The Idiots Who Call Themselves Healers

The chapter is here. You had better be happy about it.
Boom.

----

4.

THE
IDIOTS WHO CALL THEMSELVES HEALERS

Lyra had a blue
van and Zathract said he would drive to the Sanctuary; he honestly didn’t think
the police would be on patrol at two in the morning. He got in the driver’s
seat while Hunter got in beside him and Dark made himself at home in the
backseat with Lyra and Nixion, both of whom were now unconscious. Lyra had
pulled out a tranquilliser gun from her jacket and handed it to Zathract before
they had left. Lyra, having known already that Zathract would use it to put
both her and Nixion to sleep before they departed was ready for the shot, but
Zathract had to use Dark to distract Nixion while he injected the fluid in to
his bloodstream. Nixion, he knew, would not be happy when he awoke. But that
would be in the future, and he currently had two unconscious people to lug into
a van. As Zathract pulled out of the driveway and begun the seven hour trip
back into familiar surroundings and to the Australian Sanctuary, he silently
mused at the thought that the two in the back were dreaming about more
fighting, a rematch. He told Hunter and Dark that they would probably get there
around seven in the morning if they were lucky with traffic, which they
probably wouldn’t be once the sun rose, so they could sleep if they wanted.
However, Hunter had informed him quietly that he was used to not getting any
sleep for nights on end and Dark had simply told him that he wasn’t sleepy. So Zathract
continued to drive while the two exchanged tales. Dark made it clear that he
didn’t like vampires and Hunter made it clear that he didn’t like Necromancers,
but each of them made it quite clear that they liked one another, neither being
what was expected of their kind. And Zathract listened through all of it,
boredom seeping through his mind and wondering whether he would survive if he
attempted to shut them up by killing them and if they would survive the battle
with The Remaining if he did succeed in taking their lives. He decided against
it and attempted to ignore the boring conversations they discussed.

Once they left
the city and got into the country side again, Zathract decided that he liked it
out here better for driving. There were no traffic lights, no speed limits, no
street lights and no horns honking wildly from drunken teens. After almost an
hour of doing nothing but resisting the urge of slamming his head against the
wheel in frustration at the Necromancer and the vampire, Zathract pulled
himself back to earth after letting his mind wonder for a while to find that
the two had stopped talking. And he continued driving for five minutes with
dead silence.

“Have you ever
been attacked by seven people at once?” Dark asked just as Zathract was about
to ask something himself and groaned in frustration silently as Hunter replied.

“Oh, yes,” he
said darkly. “And they almost succeeded too.”

“And why were you
attacked?” Neon asked, curious.

“Oh, various
reasons.” Jake replied casually. “Most likely because I had just killed another
vampire.”

“Ah,” Dark
smiled. “So I can safely assume that it was other vampires also attempting to
kill you?”

“Most
definitely.” Hunter nodded.

“…Shut…Up…” Mist
whispered through gritted teeth the hands concealed under his gloves white with
gripping the wheel.

“Oh, nothing.”
Zathract replied cheerfully, his voice now becoming audible for the first time
since he suggested they sleep. “I was just saying that I’ve been attacked by
twenty seven sorcerers and six vampires at the same time. And killed them all.”

Dark and Hunter
fell silent again and he grinned to himself in the darkness, pleased with his
unintended tactic to shut them up. More country and farm passed them as
Zathract continued to pile on the speed, his grin slowly fading now and the
silence solidifying in the van. Tiredness slowly seeped in and begun to clog
Zathract’s mind and head begun to droop over the wheel.

“Mist, I am going to kill you!” a
deafening yell from the back seat woke up Dark, who had been sleeping, and
brought both Zathract and Hunter back to their senses while Lyra continued to
rest peacefully beside the now moving figure stifling with anger.

“You do not,” Nixion raged. “Under any circumstances, tranquillize me!” then his hands suddenly leaped to his jaw and
clutched it as the pain kicked in brutally.

Zathract shook
his head in frustration and returned his attention to the task of driving as a
cow mooed loudly from behind them.

They were at the
Sanctuary and Zathract, Dark and Hunter had had to endure the rest of the four
and a half hours of the journey back listening to Nixion complaining in a
mumble due to his broken jaw about several things including his apparent
intense pain, Zathract’s slow driving, problems with vampires, flaws in
Necromancy, being tranquillized and Mist in general. In fact, they were all
quite unpleasantly surprised that Nixion could manage a mumble at all, let
alone the loud shout he had made when he awoke. Which was quite unfortunate in
everyone else’s opinion. They were all more than content without Nixion
complaining. It was half past seven by the time they pulled up against the
school and by this point, Lyra had begun to stir, her eyes opening. Zathract
laughed as Hunter was pushed away from Lyra bitterly as he attempted to help
her down from the van. It appeared she was still drowsy though and had to walk
along slowly from behind as they made their way into the school, the slowly
rising higher and higher into the sky behind them.

Zathract lead the
group with Dark and Hunter behind him walking side by side, the latter looking
quite disgruntled, with Nixion trailing behind, clutching his jaw and wincing
with each step, and Lyra bringing up the rear walking slowly and gasping each
time her right arm moved. They continued walking, through the darkened school,
into the practically destroyed canteen, where Zathract knelt for a moment to
allow the tile to detect the traces of magic in the flame he held to it, before
proceeding down the staircase and into the Sanctuary. No one spoke as the group
marched across the long passageway lit by flame. In fact, it wasn’t much of a
march. Zathract strode normally, Hunter and Dark’s backs arched forward slightly
to display a feeling of boredom and Nixion half staggered forwards while Lyra
attempted a faster pace before finding it too difficult to increase her speed
and dropping back to her slower one making her look like she was giving off
short bursts of energy every few seconds. As usual, Zathract reflected, they
were not anywhere near the term “normal”. Normal was boring though. The way the
walls and ceilings were built and how the light of the fire illuminated the
corridor reminded Zathract very much of the movie settings of ancient castles,
the ones with knight armour standing in the corridors and where the kings all
wore robes. Of course, the three Elders had to wear robes, but they resembled
little of the silky red ones with fluffy outlining that the kings he was
thinking of wore. Zathract pushed the thoughts from his mind and continued
walking, nearing the wooden door at the end and smiling to himself at how
typical it was of him to be thinking of films at a time like this.

He reached the
end of the passageway, pushed open the wooden door stepped into the Australian
Sanctuary as the Administrator greeted him again, the other filing in behind
him.

“What this time?”
the Administrator asked Zathract as Nixion slumped against the wall, hand still
clutching at his jaw.

“We need healers.”
Zathract replied. “Medical attention for these two.” He gestured quickly at
Nixion and to Lyra who had remained standing unsupported but looked unbalanced.
The Administrator glared at Nixion for a fraction of a second, but quickly
nodded curtly and hurried off. Ten seconds later, seven people dressed in white
clothes came running out, four holding two stretchers. Zathract stepped back
with Dark and Hunter as Nixion and Lyra were carefully laid on the stretchers
and carried off.

Zathract tried
not to laugh at Nixion glaring up at the healer trying to remove his hand from
his mouth to inspect it.

***

There were
healers dressed in stupid white clothes all around him and the huge light was
blinding. Nixion was lying on a long steel platform and was strapped down to
it. It was a much friendlier environment than the room he was locked in for a
year and tortured, but the scene was familiar enough to set his memories back
to pain again.

They were all dead and Nixion was standing in
the middle of the room with their broken, lifeless bodies scattered around him,
all of which were drenched in blood, as was he. Their once pure white clothes
were now torn and bloody, worn and beaten. Nixion’s face was consumed with a
maniacal grin accompanied with insane laugher of madness. He was slightly
hunched over and his hand clutching the bloodstained machete hung loosely by
his side. Nixion’s laughter slowly dimmed and then died, the silence starting
to press in on him. It was the kind of silence that was impossible to contain,
the kind that walls could not hold. Nixion could not appreciate it, would not.
It bore down on him and expanded, slowly but steadily; purposefully as if it
had a goal. It was delicate and powerful, but vulnerable. And then the silence
shattered; a sharp knife cut through it in the form of Nixion’s voice.

“DEAD!” he bellowed and begun to laugh again.
They were all dead, all the people in the building. His former prison, the
small room he had been kept in for so long, tortured in, was behind him, the
door leading into it positioned somewhere to the left of a corridor to the
side. There was a dead body in there too. Nixion grinned darkly at the memory. The
once white walls, just like the once white clothes, were now stained and
covered in blood from all different people. Nixion remained hunched over as his
shoulders and back shook slightly with his laughter which was then ceased
abruptly. It would have unnerved everyone, if anyone was still alive. Then his
head slowly rose upwards as the silence snuck back in carefully, his eyes now
narrowing and his eyebrows contracting to create a fierce glare as if the blood
splatter on the wall had just insulted him.

“I’M NOT GIVING IT TO YOU!” he roared at the
wall and the silence scampered back out again as Nixion straightened up and
looked away from the wall after two more seconds of hardened rage. An exit. He
needed an exit out of the building, some way to get out of here, the prison. His prison…his prison.

Nixion staggered forwards, his left leg landed
heavily and he wobbled sideways for a second before getting his balance back in
check. His laugh that escaped from his mouth again turned sharp in the instant
Nixion’s weight shifted to his right leg and a cross between a growl and a gasp
of pain filled the room as pain surged through his mind and leg simultaneously.

“Revenge…” he muttered, forgetting about his
leg at once and took another staggered step forwards. “Will be…IT!” he spun
around and his hand flew upwards, finger pointed now at a double door with
blood splattered all over it. “THAT IT REVENGE! NOW!” Nixion abandoned his old direction
and marched towards the door, finger still firmly pointing at it accusingly. He
stepped over a dead body and lowered his hands when he reached the door. His
eyes travelled up and down the door, examining it carefully and softly muttered
words flittered from his mouth that hung slightly open. Nixion’s hand met the
door and he begun stroking it softly.

“Mine…it…lovely…DIE!” he rolled forwards and
crashed into the double door with such force that they were knocked off its
hinges and clattered loudly in the next corridor as Nixion stepped over them,
now walking purposefully towards a second door, moving with an air of brutal
purpose, seemingly knowing where he was going.

“BANG!” How was Nixion suddenly holding a gun?
Perhaps a better question would be “why did he just shoot it at the light above
him, plunging the corridor in to complete darkness?”, or a better one still, “why
did he discard it the second after doing this?” It didn’t seem to matter to Nixion.
He continued walking quickly forwards and turned what he imagined would be a
corner.

Smack.

Nixion staggered backwards, roared in fury and
slammed his fist into the wall before getting it stuck in there and spent the
next five minutes in a blind rage, screaming, thrashing and lashing out, trying
to free his hand from the large ditch in the wall.

He kicked it in the end which somehow
dislodged his fist and he quickly slammed his other one into the insolent wall
before turning around and smashing through a second door.

And there, right there, in front of his eyes,
was the most horrible, mind-numbingly, blindingly, terribly, disgustingly
horrid thing Nixion had ever seen. Impure and natural; horrifying to see, a feeling
to bleed against. Something to kill, yet something he could not, something no
one could. Impossible in itself to exist, something so impure, something so unnaturally
bright; it gazed into Nixion’s soul and was already torturing him. Why? After
all this time, why was something else ten times as worse taking away all the
numbness and blissful nothingness insanity bought with it and handing him back
pain and fear? He writhed and shielded his eyes against his eternal enemy:
sunlight.

Sunlight. Those
eternal, never wavering rays of impurity. They were still his enemy. Just like
this huge bright light bearing down on him now was. The only difference between
the two situations was…rather a lot of things, honestly. Nixion was now lying
on a steel bed thing and a healer dressed in white was leaning over him, asking
him something. He laughed silently. The healer looked just like one of the
people dressed in the uniforms he had killed all those years ago. He probably didn’t
have enough strength at this point to kill anyone though. Or did he? His jaw
didn’t hurt anymore. He could actually feel his fingers. Did this mean that the
healers had already operated on him?

“Have-?”

Argh, there’s the pain! God damn, no, they have not operated yet!

***

Lyra was sitting
in a comfortable red chair, her eyes closed and was failing in her attempt to
ignore the searing pain in her arm miserably. There were three healers doing
things to her, but she didn’t trust them to give her anything to eat or drink to
fix her arm, or even to numb the pain. Lyra wouldn’t even accept the numbing
leaves they had offered her and so they had quickly bustled about, trying to
fix up her injuries in some other way. The chances that they were actually
people intend on poisoning her were very, very slim, but it was a chance all
the same. And if that was a change, then the chances that they would end up poisoning
her would be reduced significantly if she refused all substances to be taken orally.

As much as her
pain ate at her, annoyance was biting its way through her flesh too; annoyance
at the stupid, idiotic healers. As if it would take them half an hour to devise
a method to at least numb a broken
arm without having the victim digest something. Idiots. Zathract Mist most likely
had something on him more worth her time than these fools. Admittedly, they were doing everything they could for
her; it just wasn’t nearly enough to satisfy.

“Ms Blue,” a man
said timidly.

“Call me that
again and I’ll slit your throat.” She snarled, eyes still closed.

There was a short
pause before the man recovered.

“I’m terribly
sorry,” he continued. “Lyra-”

“Never mind. Call
me Ms Blue.” She sighed.

The man muttered
something and continued.

“We have found a
way to-“”

“Well it’s about
bloody time.” Lyra snapped, eyes flying open. “Hurry up. Go on.” She waved him
away with her good hand and winced as her other arm shifted ever so slightly. The
idiots that existed in this world…

***

“Zathract Mist,” someone
to his right said. Zathract opened his eyes and turned his head to face the
Grand Mage as he approached the detective. He pushed himself off the wall and turned
his whole body to face the Grand Mage and smiled.

“Grand Mage.” He replied,
inclining his head slightly as a sign of welcoming. Then he paused. “I’ve been
meaning to ask; what’s your name?”

“Vai Melt has
agreed to assist if a battle breaks out that could jeopardize the country and Gabriel
Cobalt doesn’t seem to want to help.”

Thyrow nodded.

“Any news on
Mahogany, Thomas and Kali yet?” Zathract continued.

“Not yet.” Slit
replied. “I don’t suppose you bothered setting a time and date to regroup, did
you?”

“Why bother?”
Mist asked as he pulled out his phone and dialled a number. It rung three times
before Mahogany Reed answered.

“Moo.” came her
voice from the other end.

“Boom.” Mist
replied and cut the onomatopoeia. “Where are you?” the phone went dead.
Zathract looked at the screen. She had hung up.

“Moo.” Came her
voice again from behind him and Zathract didn’t even bother voicing his annoyance
before turning to see Mahogany, Kali, Thomas and one other wearing a cocky
smirk.

***

“Get off me.”
Nixion snarled, shoving a female healer off him as she tried to check his mouth
for any more missing teeth and he stalked from the room, his temper rising
steadily. The healers did not chase after him as he had expected them to.
Nixion didn’t know whether to be grateful or annoyed. He’d settle with annoyed.
He was in an annoyed kind of mood. A door to his side flew open and Lyra paced
out of it muttering darkly about uselessness. Her arm seemed to be fixed.

“What happened to
you?” Nixion asked her and she turned
to face him before continuing walking along the corridor, now walking beside
him.

“Idiot people.” She
glowered. “They call themselves healers…as if they can’t find a way to fix an
arm without forcing me to eat something…”

Nixion almost
laughed but decided he wanted to keep him jaw unbroken for as long as possible
again. They turned into a second corridor, no idea where they were going, to
run into Zathract, Kali, Thomas, Mahogany, a new person and the Grand Mage all
standing around, stuck in a very sticky silence.

“You aren’t
getting you job back.” The Grange Mage said. “That’s all there is to it.” And he
walked off without another word. At first Nixion thought that he had been
talking to Mist, but when he saw the look on the new persons’ face, he saw that
he had been wrong. Not that he cared much: this new person would probably end
up dying before long. As the Grand Mage exited the scene, Hunter and Dark
walked in and joined them.

“Who are you?”
Nixion asked the new guy. “Never mind, I don’t care.” He continued before the
newbie could answer who actually didn’t seem to care much. Nixion turned on
Mist. “So this is the team?” Nixion asked as the vampire and the necromancer
neared. Mist nodded.

“Looks like it
then.” He replied.

“Right.” Thomas
said.

“Let’s go save
the world then.” Mist said. He turned and walked off, most of the group
following suite.

“Cliché…” Nixion
heard Mahogany say cheerfully from behind as they walked towards the exit of
the Sanctuary.